Have you started to suspect you're a problem Drinker?

Increasingly we read articles about women, particularly women over 30, drinking at home.  It’s become almost the norm for so many of us to have a glass of wine or two in the evening.   For some people it’s a companion while they prepare dinner, they get to indulge in their tipple and it seems kind of sophisticated to be sipping a glass of red while stirring the culinary creation of the day.  Maybe we use it to mark the transition from frantic work day/domestic duties/parenting duties – into our brief period of “me time”.  It’s become a ritual, it feels like a right.

For some it’s longed for, as they watch the clock tick slowly through the last couple of hours at work.   The craving sets in like a Pavlov’s dog response;  that uneasy edgy feeling of anticipation, the tightening in the chest.

We’ve conditioned our brains just as Pavlov did his dogs so that our brain (loving habits as it does) now dictates that the nightly wine ritual is a requirement for us;  it sets reminders in motion when given the cues it expects.    Over time through repetition we’ve laid down neural pathways and when they’re initiated it has a feeling of inevitability about it.   Even when we consciously tell ourselves we don’t want to do it, somehow an overruling inner voice takes over and instructs us to almost sleepwalk into the bottle shop and grab another bottle and then head home as if on a mission to drink it.

Over time that glass becomes two, and then gradually creeps up to three… then there’s just that little bit left at the end of the bottle, so that you don’t have to admit to yourself that you drank the whole thing. 
You don’t sleep as well.  The wine dehydrates you and you find yourself sleeping fitfully, waking up in the middle of the night feeling unrested but unable to get back to sleep.

You’re tired at work, feeling slightly off, sluggish, all those things that you thought you’d get done the night before but which were instead  left ignored as you settled into your second glass, are now weighing on your mind.

Your skin begins to look a little blotchy.

You try to  take heart from those articles telling you that a glass of red wine is good for you and pretend that the glass it refers to isn’t  in fact a quarter of size of the one that you use as your  glass, and that you don’t stop at just  a glass any more.  You gloss over any article telling you the potential damage you’re doing to your liver and other vital organs.


You gain weight.  You don’t want to join the dots to admit that a large glass of wine is the equivalent of eating a donut, instead viewing it as a magical elixir to wash down the cheese, crackers, chocolate or whatever else it is that seems to be added to the mix once your judgement is impaired by glass number 2 or 3.
You slowly begin to see the problem .

Could this be your story, or where your story is heading?   Yes it is a problem and if this describes you you’re a problem drinker.

Once this habit is formed it can be very hard to break alone.  The brain loves automation, repetition leads to the creation of neural pathways, and once these neural pathways are laid they  are protected as if your life depends on them, because in ancient times it did!

This is why Hypnotherapy is an effective way of helping you break this habit.

If you’ve been coming to the realisation that you are a problem drinker and that it’s time for you to make changes before you do permanent damage to your health, your career, your relationships and your enjoyment of life generally; If you realise the harm you do by normalising this behaviour in front of your children, it’s time to get help.

A good therapist can work with you to help you create new habits and neural pathways through guided visualisation and embedding of new habituated thinking patterns.  Connections to old habits and rituals can be cut more easily in a therapeutic setting.  This can be done on your own, but just as an elite athlete always works with a coach to bring about excellence in performance and  to improve their chance of success, working with a therapist helps you to fast-track and refine the process of cutting associations to habits that rule you instead of serving you. 

If you’d like more information on our Hypnotherapy for Weight Loss, or Hypnotherapy for controlling alcohol consumption or Hypnotherapy to Quit Smoking (or any other unwanted habit)  please feel free to give us a call at Hypfocus Therapies on  0435 923 817 or use this contact form to get in touch with us
We’re located in Mentone, South East Melbourne. 
Melbourne Hypnotherapy
*results may vary.